Three burning questions we still have for the Gear S2

We know a lot about Samsung's new smartwatch. But some important questions remain to be answered.

There's a lot to be excited about with the new Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch, announced this past week at the IFA conference in Berlin and available in October in the U.S. We spent a little time with it this week in Germany and came away initially impressed. It looks good. It feels good. The two models — Classic is the more formal looking of the two — give you options for when you want to be more sporty, or if you need to dress up a little bit.

But for everything we liked — and let's be clear, there's a lot we like — we still have some pretty major questions that need to be answered before anyone goes anointing this thing the one smartwatch to rule them all.

What's the price?

How much should a smartwatch cost? That's something we still sort of struggle with as we try to reconcile the smartwatch's place, strattled between functional wrist computer and fashionable accessory. For all intents and purposes Android Wear watches are pretty safely positioned at about the $300 mark. Older models (and a few new ones) can be found for less, and upscale versions of the latest watches may go for more.

But we don't yet have a feel for what the Gear S2 will be sold for. Does Samsung already have the price set? Is it gauging reaction from the announcement before setting the price?

Samsung could go low and undercut all the other smartwatch manufacturers. A $200 Gear S2 would be a treat, particularly since it's no longer shacked to the Samsung ecosystem and instead is available on anything running Android 4.4 and up. (More on that in a second.)

Or Samsung could go the luxury route. Not wanting to position the Gear S2 alongside a $150 first-generation Moto 360, it could price its watch at $400 or more. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to see the Gear S2 at that price or higher, especially when you start taking some of the leather band options into consideration. (That's what Huawei's doing with its watch, as you'll recall.)

How well will it really work?

We've been pretty nonplussed by previous iterations of Samsung's Tizen-based smartwatch operating system. It was laggy. It was lacking features. What features it had tended to not extend too far beyond Samsung's own apps.

We've spent a little bit of time with the watch thus far. Easily enough to form some early opinions and write some stories and shoot some video. We're absolutely impressed by the initial performance of the Gear S2's user interface. (It's extremely fast and smooth, but it definitely will take a little time to get used to the user interface.)

But while we can write whatever we want right now, it's no substitute for strapping on a Gear S2 and actually using it. That's something we all need to remember here, I think.

How well will it work with other smartphones?

That Samsung is opening up the Gear S2 to non-Samsung smartphones is a big deal. That can't be understated. I've always believed that locking its products down to just its own phones was limiting their potential. While Samsung is the biggest player in the Android space — and I think we all tend to forget just how big — that's just leaving money (and potential future Samsung users) on the table.

But how well will the Gear S2 work on, say, the Moto X, remains to be seen. For sure Samsung has been testing things. (Click here, scroll to the bottom and then hit the "more" link just above the specs at the bottom to see that list.)

But just as we don't really know how well the Gear S2 will work in general, nor do we have any idea just yet what features might not work with non-Samsung phones. We're told the way other manufacturers implement APIs for the phone dialer, for instance, can very well cause things to not work.

Another question is how to best keep track of what works on what phones. That'll be a job for our Gear S2 forums, I think.

Let's all take a breath ...

Those are three pretty big questions that in no way damper our excitement for the Gear S2. It's an impressive watch, for sure. But we need to be careful to not be blinded by the afterglow here.

How high will the Gear S2 be priced?

How well will it work as a smartwatch? We need to actually use the thing.

Reader comments

Three burning questions we still have for the Gear S2

Just got the Gear S2 and for the life of me I don't know what I'm going to do with it. No speaker but it has a microphone so I can record a note. I still need to carry around my Bluetooth headset. Yeah, I can check my new emails but I can't figure out how to access my Gmail account to look at old emails. Milk music app on the watch just controls the phone, which, if it is my pocket, doesn't matter if I can increase the volume; it is in my pocket. It has very few apps worth even thinking about let alone will be usefull. Anyone want to buy a very slightly used Gear S2?

It is a dream that you will wake up from if you think this is going to priced lower than $300 or at $300 I really don't get the fuss with this watch I personally don't want to text from my watch or make a phone call using as that is a bad experience. This watch as the article suggestions brings up alot of questions with no answers

My biggest question is what other bands will be available for the watch (not the Classic). I definitely want some for of chain or metal band that works with the quick release functionality. That way I can have a nice looking watch for regular scenarios but can quickly throw on a silicon based band or something else sporty for working out.

I really feel these new smartwatches need to be better while maintaining similar launch pricing to the previous models at this point in time. Hoping Samsung doesn't do more than $250 and $350 but my gut says $300 and $400 unfortunately.

I owned a Samsung Gear Live. Meh. Personally, I am not going to pay more than $200 for any smartwatch. I don't find the price to functionality ratio to be worth it. This one looks interesting but undoubtedly will be priced higher than I am willing to pay.

I wish. I don't think it is though. Only the normal/sport version is in 3G. I too like the fact that the classic can use any band. They messed up IMO making the normal version the 3G. Should've made the classic 3G. That's the one everyone wants.

Will it allow payment via Samsung Pay at magnetic stripe terminals, or will it be NFC only?

Even though the latter would still give it parity with the Apple Watch, the former would be an absolute homerun in the U.S.

With the glacial pace of NFC terminal adoption in the States, mobile payment systems essentially all have an asterisk that reads: "Usable virtually nowhere!"

I've seen some tech pundits suggest that NFC will be widespread in the U.S. in only several years. I think that's laughably optimistic; I'd bet you'll see terminals every single day in 2020 that don't support NFC.

Thus, if Samsung had the foresight, they could absolutely stomp Apple in this regard. I'm extremely excited at the prospect of almost never having to pull out my wallet for payment, and I think that could easily spread to mainstream consumers once they see it in action and understand the implications.

The question is, will I be able to do from my watch like a boss tech wizard? Or will I, with great disappointment, be pulling out my phone practically everywhere except McDonald's?

How I see paying with the Samsung watch (if it has NFC/LoopPay or whatever). Go to terminal, tap your watch. Watch tells you to authenticate with your phone. Pull out your phone, wake up, use fingerprint sensor. "Authenticated!" Put phone back in pocket, tap watch, hope it works.

I've been trying to decide whether I would choose the moto 360 2nd gen or if they'd make this iteration of the G2 irresistible. I loved the camera of G1 but then the round, sexy, everyday look of the 360 made me switch. I didn't like so much holding my wrist up to talk to someone who kept saying "huh what did you say" compared to the "ok google" of moto and saying call ....." I figured if G2 pulled off the round look and kept the Samsung next gen features it'll be a no brainer, but now all of them do basically the same thing so I guess it'll come down to battery life, do I want to spin a bezel, or trudge through menu screens. What I don't want is an expensive fitbit or watch that turns into a bracelet at 7pm.

Ditto this. I picked up a new Pebble Steel a couple of weeks ago for $75. I'm 4+ days into my last charge and show 50% battery remaining. It would drive me nuts to charge my watch on a daily basis.
It may not be the latest and greatest, but it serves my purpose very well and the price was right.

I love the look of this watch but still there are questions unanswered. Can the standard Bluetooth models still enable you to accept a call and speak through the watch as the Gear 1,2, and S can. Also when is the 3G model going to be released. Will it be this side of the Xmas or 2016??

This isn't Samsung's 1st SmartWatch. They have several very good watches. I'm sure this will work great. I want the classic with a flexible metal band, very sharp. They are saying 2 days on a charge, that would be fantastic. Looking forward to seeing just how great this watch partners up with my SGS6 with 128gb of internal storage. I think it'll be the dream team.
PS, Spinning bezel is the future of SmartWatches, this is genius, Great job Samsung.

I'm not sure how well it's going to work with Google services, I'm assuming not that well because Google and Samsung are not going to work together because of conflict of interest. But the S2 watch looks hot.

These do not. I have a camera on my Gear1 classic and used it a lot at work. I liked the video function. A lot of people laugh at this feature but give the rest of the tech world 5 years and watch the feature return en mass. For video calls and Skype etc it will be so common that people will avoid smart watches that don't have this "gimmick". Just like they laughed at cameras on phones.
The first camera was produced by Sharp in November of 2000. The J-SH04 it was 0.11 megapixels!

Me, too. Battery life is the most important feature for me, simply because I don't think *any* smartwatch out there offers features yet that are valuable enough to justify having one more thing to charge every night. I travel a lot for work and I"m not willing to bring a wireless charger with me everywhere I go, so I'll stick with Pebble for the foreseeable future.

The S2 will be 349 and the S2 Classic will be 449.
For what you get and for what its competitors price their watches, this is not bad per se, although a little expensive, I think it will be a nerd darling, but not a mass success, but then again, look at the iWatch, I though the same there.

I want the S2 classic but hate the gear bezel dial since it ruins the clean modern look so I'm forced to go S2 but not a fan of the plastic wrist band. Hoping Samsung will fix the S2 classic in time for release.

What do you mean by"fix the S2 Classic" after looking at the video on its components functionality, what would make it better? I think it would work great. I had the Gear 1,2 and I looked into androidw based smart watches but they lacked the functions of the Gear series. With the Gear I could send and receive calls and texts, navigate with the Here app, receive notifications from any application that excitation exists on my phone, make voice memos listen to music heart rate monitor, control most things by voice etc. If the new gear does half that I would be happy.

I was planning on getting a Garmin or Polar GPS running watch this holiday season. But if Samsung prices this watch right, I may go for it instead. It's the first smart watch (other than my Pebble) that made me pause and say "Yeah, I could see wearing that."